Remember when Labour tried to boost party morale by claiming that they may be outspent at this election, but at least they were winning the internetz? Well Facebook has not gone very well for them today. #CameronMustGo

There’s been something of an uproar in the cryptography community following the revelation yesterday that Digital Dave is planning to clamp down on encrypted communication. It seems the PM’s plans aren’t just remarkably naive, they’re simply unenforceable. Most decent encryption technology is open source, eradicating it would mean arresting every geek with a laptop or shutting down the internet. However, Dave can take heart that he’s not in this fight alone, the other countries where there are known domestic controls on the use of encryption are Russia, China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Israel, Tunisia and Morocco.

The great socialist experiment is going so well in Venezuela that the country has run out of McDonald’s French fries and soap. Online dissent is being quelled by the authoritarian regime, with President Maduro’s government banning photos of bare supermarkets on the #AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela (#EmptyShelvesInVenezeula) hashtag. In solidarity with the oppressed peoples of of the Bolivarian Republic, Guido shares their plight:

Two years ago Owen Jones and Diane Abbott flew to Venezuela at the expense of the regime, giving the government a nice PR boost in spite of its atrocious human rights record. Now the people of Venezuela are crying out for help, where are they now?

Labour hope that social media is going to win them the election, so you might have thought they would have a look at the online presence of those chosen to introduce Ed Miliband at his speech in Manchester this morning.

Amman Ahmed took to the stage talk about the economy and business.

And what is the secret to his profit making success?

Apparently “trafficking underage hookers” and “raping elderly women and stealing their handbags”. According to his Facebook…

Labour are playing the best of a bad hand by bleating on about being outspent by the Tories, but they should be careful to avoid choking on their own Kool Aid. Pretending that Twitter can level the playing field did not work in 2010…

This is the online version of the main local paper covering Rochester and Strood, and it is running paid for American style anti-Reckless attack ad videos. Whether this is Jim Messina’s influence or just the inevitable next step in digital campaigning is unclear.[…] Read the rest

Is this rather menacing letter being pushed through doors stateside evidence of the Democrats resorting to bullying voters with big data? Worth having a read of this passage from Sasha Issenberg’s “The Victory Lab”, the seminal text on Obama’s digital campaigning.[…] Read the rest

So much for digital democracy and the new politics of ‘clicktivism’. What happened when rank and file supporters of the left-of-centre online campaign 38 Degrees voted the wrong way on backing UK air strikes against Iraq? The group’s right on ruling clique ignored the majority and said there was “no consensus”.[…] Read the rest